History of Cinematronics

 Newsgroups: rec.games.video.arcade

Path: spies!sgiblab!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnewse!ofoz

From: ofoz@cbnewse.cb.att.com (steven.s.ozdemir)

Subject: History of Cinematronics - last time posted

Organization: AT&T

Distribution: na

Date: Mon, 3 May 1993 22:32:43 GMT

Message-ID: <C6H2MM.Mrv@cbnewse.cb.att.com>

Keywords: Space Wars, Rip Off, Star Castle, and other vector games

Lines: 422

INTRODUCTION

------------

Many thanks to the other serious collectors who over the years have helped me

piece this together and fill in the blanks!!  I hope you enjoy reading this,

and do send some email to me if you'd like to see more articles like this!!!

(If you are reading through this for recreation, you may want to skip the

sections marked TECH NOTE....they tend to be boring to read.)

Writing the history of Cinematronics/Vectorbeam has felt like writing an

obituary (probably because Cinematronics stopped making vector games back in

1982, or possibly because Cinematronics went out of business back in 1986).

However, in my several years of reading r.g.v.a, I've never seen anyone

collect into one article all the disjointed facts about Cinematronics

presented in this group.  So here's the history of Cinematronics/Vectorbeam

with plenty of technical facts intersperced throughout the article...if you

want to do conversions of your Cinematronics games, this article will be of

particular interest to you!!  Space Wars and Sundance, Star Hawk and Warriors,

Tail Gunner, Rip Off and Star Castle, and the final pairing Armor Attack and

Solar Quest are all BW vector games covered below.  War of the Worlds was

another Cinematronics conversion kit for Star Castle.  Cinematronics

also made other raster games like Jack the Giant Killer, Cerberus, Danger

Zone, several sports oriented games and the popular Dragon's Lair/Space Ace

(along with color vector games called Boxing Bugs and Cosmic Chasm )

but these games are not covered below because they don't fall under the BW

vector game category.

Folklore involving Vectorbeam/Cinematronics says that the hardware for Space

Wars was created in a garage by someone who wanted to play this MIT game at

his house!  The Vectorbeam/Cinematronics folks stopped by and offered to

license the hardware....and from that point they went on to make almost a

dozen games on that hardware platform!  In fact, the fact that the later games

like Armor Attack and Solar Quest were still using the bit slice technology

is pretty amazing!  Microprocessors had been in use for several years at that

point!!  If you think about it, things make sense though....if you were trying

to make Space Wars in a garage back in 1975 (two years would be enough time

to develop the first prototype that Vectorbeam/Cinematronics discovered and

produced in 1977) you might not be able to afford the new fangled

microprocessor of the time!!  Naturally, you'd use a bit-sliced architecture

that used 74 series chips that were widely available and cheap enough.  And

as we said above, Cinematronics went on to make almost a dozen games on that

architecture without significantly changing it.  I wonder just how much revenue

was generated by that one person's hardware design....20 million?  50 million??

TECH NOTE: All the BW vector games used similar hardware. So for the most

part, all the Cinematronics boards are interchangable, except for the control

panel!! The actual Cinematronics boards do have wiring modifications (for an

unused gate) for boards using 2716s vs. 2732s, but this only involves

adding wires to use an extra gate for addressing the larger address space

in a 2732.  Do not confuse this wiring modification with the strap option

near the connectors on the mother board.  There is a small wire (1/4 of an

inch) with "NORM" and "VAR" printed nearby....this tells the mother board if

the Cinematronics monitor has the optional VARiable intensity daughter board

used in Solar Quest.  None of the modifications affect the interfaces between

the boards and the cabinet so you can use a single cabinet to test any

Cinematronics board set, but you can't play the game because the control panel

is wired only for that one particular game.  You can see the game come up on

the monitor and make the appropriate noises!! The physical appearance of the

board set is as follows.  The board set for any of the Cinematronics games

consists of two boards.  A mother board that is about 12 inches by 16 inches

and had three connectors to one side plus a molex connector to supply power

and coin door.  And a sound board that is about 6 inches by 8 inches and has

a single connector to one side plus a molex connector to supply power and

speakers.  The single connector of the sound boards connects to the center

connector of the three connectors on the mother board.  The sound boards for

all the Cinematronics BW vector games were composed of discrete components...

a practice Cinematronics continued long after other manufacturers converted

to using digital gone generators.  By sticking with analog, Cinematronics was

able to make the "droning" sounds like Rip Off background noise!  The other

two connectors on the mother board go to the control panel and the BW vector

monitor (where the signals going to the monitor are digital, not analog).

The mother board has room for four sockets that hold EPROMS or masked ROMs,

though in the one case of Tail Gunner a daughter board with over a dozen

EPROMS would go into one of the sockets!  For many of the earlier games,

only two of the four sockets/pads were filled and in many cases the masked

ROMs were soldered directly into the board (bypassing the need for a socket).  

The dipswitches for most of the Cinematronics boards serve the same purpose

except for Rip Off's diagnostic mode, which is set to OFF (instead of ON) for

normal play.

SPACE WARS and SUNDANCE

-----------------------

Vectorbeam was created back in 1976 and was located in the San Diego area.

Their first game was Space Wars, which was a two player game developed at

MIT.  Space Wars was quite novel for the time, in that you could program

the type of game you were going to play using a numerical keypad that consisted

of a two row, five column matrix of keyboard buttons.  The standard four button

controls (right, left, thrust and fire) were used for each player.  Once you

selected the type of game (gravity, reverse gravity, strong gravity, weak

gravity, speed of ships, wrap around universe and/or invisible sun), the two

players would fight for a fixed amount of time with the person making the most

kills within the time limit winning.  Note though, that hitting the other

player could result in the player only being injured, and still able to fight.

A few last bits of information about Space Wars....one player looked like the

Enterprise, another player looked like the Asteroids ship, and lastly there was

a reset button that would be hit to restart the battle with the players in

their original starting position (scores were preserved).

Sundance came after Space Wars, but we can't be sure since no owner on VAPS

has a Sundance!  This was Tim Skelly's first game...he went on to make the

classics, Rip Off, Star Castle and finally Reactor.  Sundance was not very

popular and very few were made.  A first person perspective was used and the

game was rather simple.  Sundance consisted of two tictactoe boards (with

borders thus making them into three by three matrixes) that where place above

(where the clouds would be in a first person perspective) and below (on the

ground in a first person perspective).  The controls were a matrix of buttons

(three row and three columns) that corresponded to the squares on the bottom

tictactoe board.  By pushing the button, the player caused a "hole" to appear

in that square.  The game consisted of "suns" (which looked more like

astericks) being released from the upper tictactoe board and falling down to

the bottom tictactoe board where ideally you'd open up a hole in the correct

square and swallow the sun!  If you didn't, then the sun would bounce back up

and bounce off of the upper tictactoe board only to return again.  Thus you'd

have another chance to swallow the sun in a hole!  However, as the game

progressed, the tictactoe boards would get close, and if I remember correctly

by allowing suns to bounce back and forth this would cause the tictactoe boards

to move closer together.  Either that our the suns (after numerous bounces)

would become unstable.  Whatever the case, the game would end because you

didn't swallow the suns in a hole fast enough!  As I said before the game

was quite simple....

TECH NOTE:  The Space Wars hardware consists of two masked ROMS that reside

on the standard Cinematronics motherboard.  Since there is room for four 

masked ROMS/EPROMS, two of the pads are completely empty (no sockets).  Most

Space Wars boards have the masked ROMS soldered in, and no wire jumpers exist

on any of the boards.  The sound board is rather simple.  The markings on the

masked ROMS are as follows (note that the markings from three different sets

of Space Wars boards are below....their are only two masked ROMS per board):

BOARD SET #1: SPACE WARS C1977                 SPACE WARS C1977

               'S'  7825 2147       and         'S' 7823 2148

BOARD SET #2: 'S'    8204                      'S' 7818

                 C28277M            and            2148

                   2147                         SPACE WARS

                                               COPYRIGHT 1977

BOARD SET #3: 'S'     7825E<-----?E?           'S' 7819D

                 C28277M            and          C28276M

                   2147                            2148

                   ^---this one chip

                       in set #3 was

                       in a socket

While no one on the net has ever seen the Sundance hardware, it is fair to

say that given it's simplicity Sundance must be very similar to the Space

Wars hardware.  Just like Space Wars, there should be two masked, 2K ROMs

and no strap options.  If anyone sees Sundance or knows where the hardware

might be stored, I'd be interested....you can contact me at ofoz@ihlpb.att.com

or ozdemir@xenon.stanford.edu.

STAR HAWK and WARRIOR

---------------------

Star Hawk is a rare Vectorbeam/Cinematronics games made in 1978, that never

did catch on.  To date only one non-functioning Star Hawk exists among all the

collectors on r.g.v.a, though the ROMS are available in the archive!  The game

play is similar to the Star Wars trench scene.  You fly through shooting enemy,

and the KLOV description says that a "pirate" ship flies through every so often

and shoots your score causing you to loose 800 points!  Sorta like the UFO in

Space Invaders, but with offensive capabilities!!  Star Hawk uses a standard

joystick to control the crosshairs for aiming.  Note that KLOV also lists a

game called Space Hawk, but my research into the late 70's Replay magazines

never lists a game called Space Hawk leading me to believe that Space Hawk in

KLOV is really suppose to be Star Hawk.

Warrior is a 1978 Vectorbeam/Cinematronics, 2 player game that was truly a

work of art from the game designing perspective!  The layout of the cabinet

combined with the black light shining on the numerous cardboard cut outs

makes for an incredible playfield!!!  One difference from the other 

Cinematronics games is the mounting of the monitor, which you look down into

(the neck of the tube is pointing straight down).  A piece of mirror glass is

also used to mirror in  some of the playing field.  Below is a side view of

the cabinet to give a better idea of how the playing field is constructed.

                  --------------

     playfield    |            |

     cardboard    |            |

     cut out being|            |

     reflected in |            |

     w/ mirror--> | ---------- |    PLAYERS

                  |            |     STAND

     more         | |          | o    HERE

     cardboard--> | |          | | <-------------joysticks

                  | |          |---

     mirror-----> | ---------- |  |

                  |            |---

     tube ------> | ---------- |

     that can     | \        / |

     show images  |  \      /  |

     through the  |   \    /   |

     mirror       |    \  /    |

                  |     ||     |

                  |            |

                  |            |

                  |            |

                  --------------

The playing field consists of the mirrored in cardboard cut outs (being

reflected in by mirror) and the top view of knights (or rephrased a "bird's

eye" view) being displayed on the Cinematronics BW vector monitor from below.

Together they show a scene of two knights fighting around two square pits!

Each knight is controlled by a joystick, and proceed to fight each other by

swinging long swords at each other until one of them dies and goes spinning

into the pit!!  The Warrior program has been put into the archive so that

2532 EPROMS could be used instead of masked ROMs.  (NOTE:  The jumper to

the masked ROMs should not be connected to the EPROMS!)

TECH NOTE:  As implied in an earlier paragraph, Star Hawk used two masked ROMs

and does have modifications to the board to handle these larger ROMs.  To give

details, the 6th pin from the 3 connectors at the top of the board on the side

of the ROM closest to the center of the board has been connected with a special

wire.  The board set is the standard Cinematronics mother board with two empty

places right next to the masked ROMs.  The numbers on the Star Hawk masked

ROMs are:

BOARD SET #1:  93163-2325                       93163-2326

                 3-50001          and             3-50002

                 GI 7910                          GI 7910

Warrior also uses exactly the same hardware configuration (2 masked ROMs and

the 6th pin specially wired). Below are the numbers from two sets of Warrior

boards (note there are only two masked ROMs per board):

BOARD SET #1:  MA0804-01                        MA0804-02

               01950 N69          and            003N69

               0090 7942                         320091

BOARD SET #2:  MA0804-01                        MA0804-02

                 088056           and             088056

              320090 7945                      320090 7945

TAIL GUNNER and TAIL GUNNER II

------------------------------

For the time, Tail Gunner was truly one of Cinematronics greatest triumphs!

The game's perspective is first person with a rescending star pattern as

background.  Groups of three enemy ship (displayed in 3-D like Battlezone)

and you try to shoot them down by lining the sites up with them and firing.

If you miss any one of them, you can use a shield to prevent them from getting

by you.  You have a limitted number of shield uses, and after enemy ships get

by you a certain number of times the game is over.  As the waves progress, the

enemy ships get faster, but the game play doesn't get much more complex.

Technologically, Tail Gunner does deviate the most from the standard hardware.

First, Tail Gunner came out in a sit-down version, Tail Gunner II.  Second,

the control panel has a pots joystick used to aim the site.  And third, due

to the complexity of the 3-D display program a daughter board with numerous

EPROMS (and banking hardware) was added, though in some case the boards used

4 masked ROMs.

RIP OFF and STAR CASTLE (and WAR OF THE WORLDS)

-----------------------------------------------

Rip Off, made in 1979 by Cinematronics, starts a series of VERY popular video

games that used the BW vector monitor and sometimes an overlay.  If you can

only think of one game made by Cinematronics, it's probably Rip Off or Star

Castle!!  The game play is intense...probably as intense as Robotron.  When

the game starts, the players have an over head view of 10 to 15 fuel pods

that are in the middle of the playfield and represented by triangles.  The

enemy appears in groups of three at a random point on the border of the

screen and proceeds to try to "rip off" the fuel pods by momentarily pausing

by one fuel pod to link it up and drag it off the screen.  While one of the

three ships in the group is attempting to "rip off" a fuel pod, the other two

enemy ships will attempt to kill you and your partner (if the game is being

played by two players).  The truly original part to Rip Off is that the game

only ends when all the fuel pods have been taken off the screen....SO you can

die as often as you like!!!  You just reappear at your starting point after a

brief delay!  The strategy of the game is dramatically changed by the infinite

life approach, since you now can suicide into enemy ships if you like!!  The

control panel to Rip Off is composed of buttons and in the standard Asteroids

layout minus the hyperspace button.  There are controls for two players, so

with the start buttons there was 10 buttons on the control panel!

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Rip Off is the game that started me collecting video games...

mainly because of the intense gameplay and teamwork in the two player game!

A few minor details that weren't mentioned above are that only 4 bullets are

allowed on the screen at one time AND you can get set it up so that a single

enemy ship will loop around you infinitely (so you can go to the bathroom)!)

Star Castle is an equally popular game made in 1980 by Cinematronics.  While

the game does not involve two players on the playfield at the same time, Star

Castle make up for the lack of teamwork by providing VERY difficult enemies!

The game starts with a single ship in the middle surrounded by "spinning

rings" that you can run into without being destroyed.  The perspective is

"bird's eye" as with most Cinematronics games.  The ship and rings have

different colors due to the color overlay.  By shooting at the rings, you

open up holes to shoot through and when the holes of the different rings

allign themselves, you can get a straight shot to the center ship.  The down

side is that whenever the rings allign to give you a straight shot, the center

ship takes a shot at you also!!  If you do manage to kill the center ship, you

do get an extra ship, so if you both manage to hit each other you'll come out

ahead.  The last part of the gameplay is the small ships that live on the

rings and cannot shoot you.  When the section of the ring (with a small ship

on it) gets destroyed by your shots, these small ships are released and

proceed to home in on you and destroy you!  You can trick them into running

into the ring, and the small ship reconnects with that ring section until

you come along and destroy that section of the ring.  These small ships are

not numerous, but annoying enough that you must keep moving to avoid them!  

War of the Worlds was a conversion for Star Castle.  Given the rarity of

the game, it's debatible that the game was popular or even had a decent

production run.  Again, to date no one has seen the board set, and only

old issues of Replay magazine prove the game existed.  The game's control

panel use the same layout as Star Castle.

TECH NOTE: Starting with Rip Off, four socketed 2716's hold the game.  No

jumpers are needed, and for the most part these games can be considered the

"standard" Cinematronics hardware.  Different wiring modifications are used

in later games for 2732's, but Cinematronics never really changed the mother

board significantly in later games.  For this reason (along with the standard

connectorization described above), you can EASILY covert the games from one

to the other by merely burning new EPROMS!!  If you decide to change sound

boards and do minor rewiring of the buttons, you can be playing the other

game in its original form!!  A small detail, which may affect conversions,

is that the dipswitch settings for Rip Off are slightly different from most

other Cinematronics boards.  Rip Off has the dipswitch for diagnostics set

to OFF (not surprising give the name is Rip OFF) for normal play, where as

Star Castle, Armor Attack and Solar Quest all have the dipswitch for

diagnostics set to ON.  In most other respects, the other dipswitches for

these four games have the same meaning and thus can have the same settings!

ARMOR ATTACK and SOLAR QUEST

----------------------------

Armor Attack is the most complicated game Cinematronics game!  Produced in

1980, Armor Attack allows two players to jointly compete against the computer.

Like Warrior, the Armor Attack relies heavily on images not displayed on the

vector monitor and instead uses an intricate overlay to define the playfield.

Using the typical "bird's eye" view, the playfield is the center square of a

town where a few enemies tanks come out from a dozen or so possible points on

the perimeter of the screen.  Your jeep in the middle of the square must go

through the streets and around the buildings trying to destroy the tanks

without being hit by the tanks.  Occasionally, a helicopter that is

unrestricted by the buildings comes out and tries to shoot your jeep.

Tanks must be hit twice to be killed, and their movement is disabled if

they are hit by one shot....the tanks can still shoot you!  After all tanks

are killed, another round starts and several more tanks come out.  If you

manage to kill five helicopter, then you are awarded an extra jeep!  The

controls to the games are identical to Rip Off.  You have the standard

Asteroids controls (minus the hyperspace), so you're looking at ten buttons

and not much more!

Solar Quest was the final game that Cinematronics used vectors.  Solar Quest

was produced in 1981 and had extra hardware on the monitor to generate 64

different intensity levels.  Using the typical "bird's eye" view, the

playfield looks very much like Space Wars.  You have a sun in the center and

an Asteroids-shaped ship, that does have the capability to launch "nukes" in

addition to the typical laser.  The "nuke" act like photon torpedos in Star

Trek and you detonate it by pushing the button a second time.  A hyperspace

button is also available.  When a round starts, several ships appear on the

border of the screen.  Unfortunately, I have never seen the game play, so

I can't add more than this.  Though KLOV does mention that these ships do

attack you and you rescue colonists.  The control panel has the standard

Asteroids layout with an additional button next to the hyperspace to handle

the "nukes". 

TECH NOTE: As with Rip Off and Star Castle, four socketed 2732's are used in

the game.  Jumpers are needed since you have 2732's, but for the most part

these games can be considered the "standard" Cinematronics hardware.  For this

reason (along with the standard connectorization described above), you can

EASILY covert the games from one to the other by merely burning new EPROMS!!

Just like Rip Off and Star Castle, if you decide to change sound boards and

do minor rewiring of the buttons, you can be playing the other game in its

original form!!  One notable exception beyond the more complicated sound

boards is the extra daughter board on Solar Quest's monitor that produces

64 different vector intensities.  To use the extra daughter board, a wire on

the side of the mother board with all the connectors needs to be moved from

"NORM" to "VAR" where VAR stands for variable intensity.  The wire is about

a quarter inch long, and shouldn't be moved to VAR if you are using the

standard Cinematronics monitor without the daughter board!

MISCELLANEOUS

-------------

Speed Freak is a Vectorbeam game made in 1977, and certainly beyond its

time.Basically a vector Night Driver with more stuff, the road would curved

more than once on the screen producing S curves that had to be navigated!

Light poles, stick figures, random stuff the side of the road, and

occasionally oncoming traffic made the gameplay rather difficult.

Controls were a steering wheel, 4-speed shifter, and accelerator (and maybe

brake).  To date no one has seen the board set....all we have is a vague

collective memory of the complete game.  

Boxing Bugs is color vector made in  1982 by Cinematronics.  This was one of

the few color vector games produced by Cinematronics, and only one exists among

all the owners in VAPS.  Unfortunately, the game doesn't work and as you might

imagine parts for it are next to impossible to find!  Controls are a knob

(Feels like a Clarostat or pot, not a whirligig) and three buttons,

one helpfully labelled "PANIC".  It has what looks like part of the

regular BW monitor circuitry on a separate board to drive the Wells color

vector monitor (used in Tempest and other Atari color vector games).

Cosmic Chasm was the other color vector.  It was originally written for

the Vectrex.  It had a cool cabinet with viewports larger than but

reminiscent of Battlezone.  Controls were a rotary knob and several

buttons.  I've seen pictures but not an actual game.  Marquee was 3-sided

like Dragon's Lair.